North Park community members gathered for the Covenant Midwinter Conference.
Last winter’s annual Covenant Midwinter Conference, held in Jacksonville, Florida, was imbued with a festive spirit as North Park community members joined fellow Covenanters for the annual conference for a variety of activities, including worship, breakout sessions, relationship-building, and hearing from people across the Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC). “There was the excitement of being able to gather and lots of laughter,” said Baily Warman, director of North Park Theological Seminary (NPTS) Admissions. “One of our alumni, Eric Landin C’09 S’17 told me ‘I’m having fun in ministry right now,’ and that was so refreshing to hear after the difficulty of the last few years.”
One of the weekend’s highlights was honoring Debbie Blue S’96 with the NPTS Distinguished Alumni Award.
Later that week, Dennis Edwards, seminary dean and vice president for church relations, led the conference through an intentional reflection on how God had been at work during the week of Midwinter.
In the days prior to Midwinter, the ECC hosted the NextGen Conference, a reworked version of the Youth Worker Connection. This new conference incorporates young Covenanters who are involved in other aspects of the church besides youth ministry.
The NextGen conference featured North Park-led worship and breakout sessions on topics like outreach innovations and how to be a trauma-informed youth pastor.
North Parkers played other key roles in the conference, including Matthew Lundgren C’97 S’01, who led worship for the week. Lundgren led the hugely popular Monday Night Worship with the theme “The Music That Made Us,” which is available on the ECC’s Instagram page.
ECC President Tammy Swanson-Draheim C’98 S’15; Curtis Ivanoff S’08 superintendent of the Alaska Conference; and Rameila Williams C’98 S’16, director of ministry initiatives for Love Mercy Do Justice hosted a morning session called “Practices of Presence” in which they meditated on topics such as awareness, intimacy, identity, and empowerment.